Black Manta

Black Manta is a fictional supervillain appearing in DC Comics, and is the archenemy of Aquaman.

Publication history

The character debuted in Aquaman #35 (September 1967) and was created by Bob Haney and Nick Cardy.

Fictional character biography

Black Manta had no definitive origin story until #6 of the 1993 Aquaman series. In this origin, the boy who would become Black Manta grew up in Baltimore, Maryland, and loved to play by the Chesapeake Bay. As a youth he was kidnapped and forced to work on a ship for an unspecified amount of time, where he was sexually abused by his captors. At one point, he saw Aquaman with his dolphin friends and tried to signal him for help but was not seen. Finally, he was forced to defend himself, killing one of his tormentors on the ship with a knife. Hating the emotionless sea and Aquaman, whom he saw as its representative, the boy was determined to become its master.

An alternative version was given in #8 of the 2003 Aquaman series. In this origin, the boy who would become Black Manta was an autistic orphan placed in Gotham City's Arkham Asylum. He felt comfortable in freezing cold water, but found cotton sheets excruciatingly painful. Because the attendants at Arkham did not know how to deal with autism, they would end up restraining him to the bed as he struggled and screamed whenever they tried putting him to bed. In this version, young Black Manta was also fascinated when he saw Aquaman on television.

Manta

Manta may refer to:

Places

People

Entertainment

Unreal Tournament 2004

Unreal Tournament 2004 is a first-person shooter video game developed by Epic Games and Digital Extremes. It is part of the Unreal series, specifically the subseries started by the original Unreal Tournament; the sequel to 2002's Unreal Tournament 2003.

Unreal Tournament 2004 features most of the content of its predecessor. Among significant changes to gameplay mechanics and visual presentation, one of the major additions introduced by Unreal Tournament 2004 is the inclusion of vehicles and the Onslaught game type, allowing for large-scale battles.

Its sequel, Unreal Tournament 3, was released on November 19, 2007.

Plot

A long time ago the humans fought a war with the Skaarj, which left their galactic empire in shambles. To assist in the rebuilding of the colonies by calming down enraged colonists, the Liandri Corporation came up with the idea of staging a gladiatorial tournament for the miners. The interest was so high that it grew into a sport, with sponsored teams battling in specially made arenas.

Uridium

Uridium is a science fiction side-scrolling shoot 'em up originally designed by Andrew Braybrook for the Commodore 64, and later ported to other 8-bit machines. It consists of fifteen levels, each named after a metal element, with the last level being called Uridium (a fictional metallic element, not to be confused with the real metallic element iridium). The manual quotes Robert Orchard, who invented the name as saying "I really thought it existed."

Uridium was later released for the Nintendo Entertainment System in 1990. Mindscape purchased a license to release a game based on the film The Last Starfighter. Rather than program a new game, however, Mindscape decided to take an easier route by recycling an older, relatively obscure game. The title screen, sprites, and soundtrack were modified, but the levels and gameplay were identical. In 2003, it was re-released on the C64 Direct-to-TV.

In 2008, the C64 version was announced as a title on the Wii Virtual Console. On 28 March 2008, Uridium was released for the Virtual Console in Europe, costing 500 Wii Points.